


99th Avenue Brooklyn

by Emmalyn



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Department store au, Fluff and Crack, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-09
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-12 10:42:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2106732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emmalyn/pseuds/Emmalyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by a Tumblr conversation about the 99 working at a department store instead of the police station.</p><p>It goes about as well as you'd expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	99th Avenue Brooklyn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ClassyFangirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClassyFangirl/gifts).



It’s a pretty good day, in Charles Boyle’s estimation. And it hasn’t even really started yet.

Most of the debris from the Great Waffle-Maker Versus Panini Press Battle of Last Week has been cleared away. A few blenders had been listed as “civilian casualties” in the store’s stock records, but Charles has managed to set them up as store samples without too much fuss. Rosa had even given him a thumbs-up at the effort.

And just yesterday, a lovely chef named Vivian had come in and complimented Charles’s talents at organizing the bakeware from smallest size to largest, with the brands alphabetized in serial order. He may have preened a little at the praise. Just a little. (Even Holt’s insistence that he stick to one shelving scheme hadn’t dimmed his enthusiasm.)

Now he’s contemplating a full-scale redistribution of children’s shoes--which, to be honest, isn’t his area of expertise--but it’s where he’s been assigned. Charles tilts his head. Yes, arranging the shoes in order of color would be helpful.  Size order is so last-decade. Tacky, even. Certainly not as fashionable or logical as a beautiful color palette would be.

Sweeping all the shoes off of one shelf, Charles opts to start with the fuchsias.

\---

Rosa Diaz is seething. From behind her returns counter, she can see the line of customers stretching out from their locked glass doors to the curb. What kind of idiots get up at six AM for a ten percent off sale? And Diaz just cleaned the damn windows, so the morons better not muck it up with their oily little fingers or--you’ve gotta be kidding. That kid just put his whole face up against the door, ugh!

Diaz glares. The liner-uppers will just have to deal with filthy little kid germs while she sets up, because she is not going out there again with a freaking baby wipe to clean up after someone else’s larva.

Someone steps up to the window, shoving others out of the way, waving a receipt angrily. About three hundred pairs of neon underwear are stuffed in her expensive-looking purse. Obviously the lady hasn’t read their return policy, which states that no refunds are given for opened packs of jockstraps. Or thongs. Whatever.

Underpants Lady looks kinda pissed. Diaz grins. Maybe today won’t be so bad after all.

\---

Hands on his hips, Jake Peralta stands back and smiles at his masterpiece. Days of hard work--very important, classified, you-wouldn’t-understand-and-if-you-did-I’d-have-to-kill-you work--had culminated in this, his Ultimate Artistic Success.

Jake can’t even stand it. It’s just so beautiful. Brings a tear to his eye. Okay, maybe that last one is just because he’s standing under a vent, but still. Boyle’s gonna have a field day congratulating Jake over this one. They’ll probably get some bro-tastic backslap-hugs in there for good measure.

Let’s see the Vulture try to steal this look for his stupid upscale “downtown” branch, Jake thinks triumphantly. (More like dorktown, right?) There isn’t another work like this one in all the world. And it’s right in front of the checkout lanes, where every customer will see it and marvel at its magnificentness. Magnificentitude. Magnifi-yeah, okay, that’s enough.

The mannequin’s green polka-dotted tie just goes so perfectly with that red plaid shirt and white golf jacket! And Jake managed to fit the tie in, which was pretty much Holt’s only instruction. The only one Jake followed, anyway.

Holt’s gonna love it.

\---

Branch Manager Raymond Holt does not, in fact, “love it.”

In fact, he questions the sanity of whichever of his employees set up this childish display, even though he knows it was Peralta. It’s always Peralta.

(Except when it’s Gina. That woman has an unhealthy attachment to animal prints, and somehow she manages to find things to put on mannequins that he’s not even sure their store sells.)

Holt sighs. The affected kicked-puppy look that Peralta likes to put on doesn’t work on him, it has never worked, it never will work, and yet...Holt takes the tie off of the poor mannequin and tosses it into the “to-stock” bin. Then he unbuttons the first couple of buttons on the plaid shirt and straightens the collar a little. It looks a bit better when he’s done. His husband would be proud--or, at least, marginally less horrified.

Maybe red plaid would be “in” this season. A manager could hope.

\---

The crowd continues to push forward against the front doors of their store. Security Guard Terry Jeffords has his arms spread against the tide of people shoving at each other to be the first inside. “It’s almost eight AM, people,” he shouts over their heads. “Please behave yourselves so Terry doesn’t have to be the bad guy, okay? No shoving!”

The second Manager Holt unlocks the doors, Terry has a few dozen moms and baby strollers and annoyed businesspeople pushing past him, and he just gives up. He tries to herd everyone as safely into the building as possible, and then takes some deep breaths and thinks of his baby girls and tries to calm down a bit.

Maybe he’ll do some chin-ups in the dressing rooms for awhile. He can take a quick nap while he waits for the screaming to start.

\---

Gina Linetti doesn’t care who’s screaming, or why, or where, unless it’s right in her ear when she’s trying to read People. And right now, that’s exactly what’s happening.

“What’s wrong, widdle crybaby?” she asks, still reading an article about someone supposedly dating Leo Di-What’s-His-Name from that one movie about a boat. Gina thinks it’s pretty farfetched that a Leo could be dating a Capricorn, but the article is pretty funny. “Did you lose your mommy?”

The kid stops screaming. “I’m seven,” he says. “Not a baby.”

Gina pops her gum. “Coulda fooled me.” Apparently the guy is only named Leo. Okay, that makes more sense.

The kid’s face scrunches up like he’s going to start crying again, and Gina presses her index finger to his lips. “Shh, little crybaby, it’s gonna be okay.” She draws out the last word to seem comforting. That’s what you do with kids, right?

“Okay, okay, I did lose my dad,” the kid mumbles, scuffing a toe into the carpet. “Dunno where he is.”

“Yeah, me neither,” says Gina, and turns the page. Ooh, more hot guys, this is a good issue.

After a few moments, when the kid still hasn’t budged and is giving Gina a pleading look, she sighs. “Alright, kid, let’s go find your lost daddy. Or like, an alien who could pretend to be him and adopt you, in case your daddy’s gone forever. That would work, too..” Gina pushes off the shelf display she was leaning on and walks toward the front of the store. “Come on, I don’t have all day.”

The kid shrugs and follows after the weird lady, and doesn’t comment when she tears out a page from her magazine for him when they find his dad. It’s probably a gesture of friendship, or something. Although he has no idea what “never date a Capricorn” means.

\---

As odd as Gina is around children, Amy Santiago might actually be worse. Manager Holt has scolded her several times for trying to ask families what they need. She’s just trying to be helpful! Surely if she can prove that she’s doing what the customers want, Manager Holt will respect her more and maybe even let her be Assistant Manager. Her dream job. Well, other than managing a store herself, of course.

Amy spots a likely target--no, customer, she corrects herself--and sets off. The woman looks exhausted, so some help would likely be appreciated.

“Hello, ma’am, and welcome to 99th Avenue Brooklyn!” Amy calls. The woman doesn’t respond. She was probably too far away to hear.

Amy sets off down the aisles to find the woman, and nearly runs into her in menswear. “Oh, hello ma’am, I just wanted to welcome you to the store and ask if you needed anyth--”

Oh no. The woman turned her back! She’s walking away! Frantically, Amy goes over their previous interactions. Did she say something to offend the woman? Hm, probably not. But just in case, Amy hurries after her.

“Ma’am, I’m so sorry if I said something to offend you,” she starts, then stops. The woman is frowning at her, confused, and there’s something in her ears that--oh. She’s wearing headphones.

“What do you want?” the woman asks, pulling out an earbud.

Amy flushes with embarrassment. “Sorry, ma’am, I--I mean--” She grabs a handful of shirts off the nearest rack. “I was just reorganizing these shelves! They need to be reorganized every day or two, you know.” Laughing awkwardly, Amy steps backward and trips. The shirts flop to the ground in a heap. “Oh, I just--I need to pick these up,” she says, smiling her best customer-service smile. “Let me know if you need anything.”

The woman nods, backing slowly away. “Uh, thanks.”

Taking deep breaths, Amy folds the shirts, and decisively ignores Scully and Hitchcock, who are giggling behind her. After all, she’s going to get good ratings this quarter, and those two still offer to try on shirts for customers. How weird is that!

(Certainly much, much weirder than Amy. Much weirder.)

\---

They’re all a little weird, Holt thinks. The security cameras show it all: Amy scrambling to pick up polos while Gina is handing out bits of magazines to kids; Terry building Lego playsets next to Boyle’s massive pile of shoes; Diaz scaring everyone as Jake puts a yellow bow tie on a women’s blouse mannequin--and Scully and Hitchcock...doing whatever they usually do. (Holt doesn't really want to know.)

They’re all a little weird, but somehow it works.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Still working on other fics, but I thought I'd ease back into writing with something small. Feedback/concrit always welcomed. :)


End file.
